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Isotopes & Radiation
Members are devoted to applying nuclear science and engineering technologies involving isotopes, radiation applications, and associated equipment in scientific research, development, and industrial processes. Their interests lie primarily in education, industrial uses, biology, medicine, and health physics. Division committees include Analytical Applications of Isotopes and Radiation, Biology and Medicine, Radiation Applications, Radiation Sources and Detection, and Thermal Power Sources.
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2024 ANS Annual Conference
June 16–19, 2024
Las Vegas, NV|Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino
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The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Remembering Charles E. Till
Charles E. Till
Charles E. Till, an ANS member since 1963 and Fellow since 1987, passed away on March 22 at the age of 89. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Saskatchewan and a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Imperial College, University of London. Till initially worked for the Civilian Atomic Power Department of the Canadian General Electric Company, where he was the physicist in charge of the startup of the first prototype CANDU reactor in Canada.
Till joined Argonne National Laboratory in 1963 in the Applied Physics Division, where he worked as an experimentalist in the Fast Critical Experiments program. He then moved to additional positions of increasing responsibility, becoming division director in 1973. Under his leadership, the Applied Physics Division established itself as one of the elite reactor physics organizations in the world. Both the experimental (critical experiments and nuclear data measurements) and nuclear analysis methods work were internationally recognized. Till led Argonne’s participation in the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE), and he was the lead U.S. delegate to INFCE Working Group 5, Fast Breeders.
D. D. Lisowski, T. C. Haskin, A. Tokuhiro, M. H. Anderson, M. L. Corradini
Nuclear Technology | Volume 183 | Number 1 | July 2013 | Pages 75-87
Technical Paper | Thermal Hydraulics | doi.org/10.13182/NT13-A16993
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Recent design efforts have used the reactor cavity cooling system (RCCS) for passive decay heat removal in the Next Generation Nuclear Plant. Employing a series of riser tubes and cooling panels that line the containment walls, the RCCS can provide an ultimate heat sink for decay power removal from the system without the need for AC power. With vessel wall temperatures expected to reach 450°C, intuition suggests that radiation will be the dominant mode of heat transfer. However, the authors show that several factors can alter these modes; variations in cavity height, riser tube geometry, and vessel heat flux may have significant roles in the heat removal by the RCCS.The authors have constructed a one-quarter-scale water-cooled experimental facility at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that is based on available open literature of the General Atomics modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, with a three-riser tube and cooling panel test section representing a 5-deg slice of the full-scale design. Under prototypic heat flux conditions, a series of scoping tests with linear and asymmetrically skewed heating profiles were performed to investigate the split in flow distribution among the parallel channels. Numerical results, using RELAP5 models and FLUENT simulations, provide a comparison to experimental data sets and insight into the split among heat transfer modes present in the cavity.Application of these passive decay heat removal systems demands a pragmatic approach that can account for the irregularities and nonuniformities present in a real design. In areas of blocked views, such as near support structures and primary cooling pipes, convection can provide a mechanism to smooth the otherwise skewed radiative heat flux for heat transfer from the reactor pressure vessel walls to the cooling panels. Integral to the design of the RCCS, the cooling fins serve to protect the cavity wall while adding additional pathways for heat dissipation by conduction into the cooling tubes.